


somewhere i have never travelled

by staranise



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Islamic and Viking Trade Routes, Road Trips, headcanon: Joe was a peaceful merchant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:28:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25640611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/pseuds/staranise
Summary: Before the siege of Jerusalem, Yusuf Al-Kaysani had thought he knew what his life's passion was going to be.He was, like an early map, right in some essentials, but way off in the details and scale.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 193





	somewhere i have never travelled

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [on my Tumblr](https://with-my-murder-flute.tumblr.com/post/625211018517315584/before-the-siege-of-jerusalem-yusuf-al-kaysani)!

Before the Siege of Jerusalem, Yusuf al-Kaysani thought he’d been blessed with the life he’d always wanted. He’d explained to his friends, just that winter, that having his heart broken has taught him that the truest love of his life was travel; and wasn’t he travelling? Hadn’t be been trusted with a ship of his own, and a cargo to take to Jerusalem?

His heart had been broken the year before, when he’d accompanied his uncle’s ship of glassware and silver to Cádiz. Not that he blamed his uncle’s ship or the voyage itself–his first time out of the Mediterranean, first time glimpsing the vast Altantic. His heart had been stolen in that port late one night, over coffee.

“We’re sending three ships of silk to Bruges and London next,” one of his uncle’s friends had said. “Our pilot has guided three trips to Bordeaux now, but he knows the coast as far north as anyone could want. He says he’s from an island so far north from Britain, it’s covered in ice, even in the summer. They don’t freeze to death because hot springs come out of the ground, apparently.”

Yusuf’s mouth had gone dry. His heart beat in his throat. “He comes from Thule?”

The man had turned to his uncle, mouth crooked in a smile. “Ptolemy? You said your nephew wasn’t a scholar.”

“Oh, he’s not, the lazy boy,” his uncle had said, which hurt, a little. Yusuf was twenty-two, which wasn’t young anymore; and he’d studied everything his tutor set in front of him, and excelled in geometry, mathematics, and cartography, all of which a merchant needed to know. He just wasn’t studying the scriptures in Cairo like his cousin Nasr, and he’d enjoyed reading for pleasure more than the cultivation of his soul, so his uncle was barely willing to grant him the achievement of literacy. “Unless it’s old pagan legends or geographies. Silly, irreligious tales.”

“He should meet my pilot,” the merchant said wryly. 

That night, on the way back to their lodgings, and the next morning in the warehouse, as often as he prayed, Yusuf argued with his uncle to let him go. They weren’t getting the prices they wanted; further north their wares would be rarer, more precious. He needed more experience of the world. The ships would already be well-armed and well-guarded. Why _shouldn’t_ he go? 

He’d almost flown apart with happiness when he got grudging permission to ask, with grim assurances that he was to return and personally explain to his father if he somehow died along the way. He’d made a spectacle of himself in the street, running to his uncle’s friends house.

“Oh,” the man said, his face falling. “Oh, I am sorry. The ship sailed this morning.”

That, Yusuf had told his friends, was when his heart broke, more than it ever had for any woman. The moment he had not been able to sail. And he intended his next trip–his own, a voyage by sea to Jaffa and then to Jerusalem to negotiate the deal himself–to begin to make up for it. They had better get used to his letters, because he intended to travel as much as he could.

He had thought he’d known what his life was supposed to be.

But he did live to see Iceland.


End file.
